NATIVE                                    VS                            IMMIGRANT

The concept of "digital native" or native speaker of the digital language is a new one, which emerged in 2007 and was coined by Marc Prensky. It describes a person who was raised in a world filled with technology (computer, cell phone, television, internet and so many other), and who grew up using them extensively. This generation has been surrounded by technology their whole life, it has been part of their daily routine since they were born. Most of them are experts and they see media in a way that the older generations will most likely never understand. The generations that were born in these technology-oriented era benefit of knowledge in all different sort of technology that the older generation will probably never learn or will have much more difficulty doing so. This generation has a tendency to multitask with much more ease and split their attention with an ease that is incomprehensible to many.

I found the term interesting since it implies some kind of belonging to a society, a nation which you might have been lucky enough to be born into or you might have migrated to (digital immigrants) and thus you aspired of becoming like them, but most likely never will. It implies some kind of superiority for the native even though some members of the younger crowd, who are considered members of those so called “digital natives” do not possess the technological knowledge the term implies while on the other hand, some members of the immigrant group possess equivalent knowledge and even sometimes could be mistaken for natives.

Teaching and Learning Implications:

An interesting thing to look at is how can a digital immigrant,, like the teacher who wasn't born in the digital age, teach about technology and media to digital-natives, a.k.a. their students? And what challenge does this bring? I mean, someone who was born into the digital world and is capable of multi-tasking so much does not necessarily learn the same way as a digital immigrant,. Some differences between digital immigrants and natives are: natives prefer recieving info quickly, prefer processing pictures, videos, sounds, prefer instant rewards and gratification and prefer to interact simultaneously with others. Digital immigrants, on the other hand, prefer a controlled slower paced learning, single sourced processing, learning independantly and using books/texts before pictures and videos and delayed gratification/rewards [5].  Mark Prensky has even said that the brain structure of these digital natives might be wired differently from those of previous generations [6].  Prensky believes that the way to bridge the learning gap between the old methods of teaching (by digital immigrants) and the new ways of learning (by the digital natives) is for teachers to learn the language (a.k.a. learn about the digital community/world, speed up instructions, and integrate technology in class: talk about sofetware and robotics, etc [6].

Here is a picture (taken from http://johnwilborn.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/digital-native.jpg) showing a digital immigrant who can see the discrepancy between his way of looking at the world and that of a digital native. He also sees that digital natives have another culture under their belts: digital culture, and that it is important to get involved, even as an immigrant, into this new way of life.

www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2325900963594988172 

REFERENCES

http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky%20-%20Digital%20Natives,%20Digital%20Immigrants%20-%20Part1.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_native

http://www.digitalnative.org/#about

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2325900963594988172

[5] http://www.apple.com/au/education/digitalkids/disconnect/landscape.html

[6] http://www.wisc.edu/depd/html/TSarticles/Digital%20Natives.htm